Yawara!

Inokuma Yawara is just another young high school girl. Well, not quite for Yawara is being raised by her grandfather, 7th dan Judo master Inokuma Jigorou, to be Japan’s great hope for the women’s Judo competition at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. All the same, Yawara just wants to live a normal life…

Avelys Rating: 9/10

Avelys Notes: I started reading this manga after developing an interest in Urasawa, Naoki– who wrote manga such as Monster, 20th Century Boys and Pluto. I was amused when I read this manga’s title about “A Fashionable Judo Girl” and started reading immediately. I loved it. (I loved it so much that when I realized there was no more chapters out even though it’s been completed for years, I dropped everything and started teaching myself Japanese so I could continue reading it in it’s original language). The main character was completely adamant about being a “normal” girl–despite being raised in an environment where she had to train extensively. She wanted to make friends and have a boyfriend–despite probably being stronger than all the boys in her school. Her grandfather has his eyes set on her future and her becoming a world champion. But our MC is stubborn and doesn’t want anything to do with Judo. As we see her reluctantly be put into situations where she has to use her skills in the hopes of developing a love for it, we also see her make new friends and fall in love. Those two aspects of her mix in really well and from what I’ve read, she has to learn to juggle both parts of her life until she probably has to make a decision. I love the art style as it’s very similar to Urasawa’s other works. Very clean and neat with more emphasis on the facial expression than the backgrounds.I highly recommend if you’re interested in a sports manga or just want to read about a young girl’s fight to be a normal fashionable judo girl.

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I have been staring at this manga for like the longest time because you know, Urasawa is a God and this looks so different from all of his other works that I have seen. I am really interested to see he would handle this kind of story but then there are barely any chapters out so I can’t marathon it like an Urasawa series should be :'(

There’s like 90 chapters out though. I’m letting more of them update before I catch up since it looks like a group picked up the project and updating like crazy. So happy ^.^ But yeah, definitely worth reading. I love it. Especially her ojiisan <3